Opinion by Judge NOONAN; Dissent by Judge PREGERSON.

Manuel Mora and the class represented by him (collectively Mora) appeal the judgment of the district court denying credits for hours of service giving rise to additional pension benefits from the defendant, Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern California (the Pension Trust). Mora contends that contributions made to the Construction Laborers’ Trust for Southern California (the Vacation Trust) should generate the service credits. The district court ruled that ERISA did not require the contributions to count toward service credits and granted summary judgment to the Pension Trust. We affirm. Doing so, we dispel a confusion largely caused by a name.

FACTS

The Pension Trust is the product of collective bargaining between the Southern California District Council of Laborers together with affiliated local unions and the Southern California Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America together with other associations of contractors. The Pension Trust was established on October 16, 1962. Its terms are set out in over 90 typed pages. Article IX provides for its amendment by the trustees. It has been amended 55 times, normally as the result of collective bargaining. Half of the trustees are elected by the union and half by the associations of employers. There is a procedure for appealing the denial of pension claims and there is a Pension Appeals Committee, whose elected chairman is John L. Smith, the Business Manager of Local No. 1184, Laborers’ International Union of North America, AFL-CIO.

Employers are required to contribute to the Pension Trust for all hours worked by a construction laborer and for all hours for which the laborer is paid although no work is performed. If a laborer receives a paid vacation, the employer is required to contribute to the Pension Trust for each hour of such vacation.

The collective bargaining agreements between the union and the employer association have not required paid vacations. Some employers give them, some don’t. In 1965, the union and the employer associations negotiated the establishment of the Vacation Trust, to be governed by trustees half appointed by the union and half by the employers. The Vacation Trust had in Article XIII a provision for amendment by the trustees and in Article VIII, an appeals process. Amended article 12.07 provides:

Article 12.08 then provides:

According to the sworn and undisputed declaration of John L. Smith:

Mora is a retired construction laborer and union member, who receives an early retirement pension from the Pension Trust. In 1970 and again in 1972, Mora worked less than 1,000 hours and so did not receive service credits for those years. But there were payments made to the Vacation Trust for the hours he did work in those years. If those payments were treated as counting for hours of service he would have over 1,000 hours of service for 1970 and 1972 and increase his pension by $26.00 per month.

On December 28, 1999, Mora appealed the computation of credits for 1970 and 1972. On January 26, 2000, the Pension Appeals Committee denied his appeal.

PROCEEDINGS

On January 14, 2002, Mora began this suit in the district court. On November 20, 2002, the district court found that the requirements for certification of a class had been met, that the estimated class was between 500 and 600 persons whose claims were typical and shared commonality, and that fair and efficient adjudication called for certification of a class of participants or their surviving spouses who had been granted a pension by the Pension Trust after January 1, 1975, the date on which ERISA applied. The class was essentially limited to those who had not received ser *1124 vice hours credit for payments from the Vacation Trust.

On October 10, 2003, the district court denied Mora’s motion for summary judgment. On March 12, 2004, after submission of additional documents and declarations by both sides, the district court, sua sponte, gave summary judgment to the Pension Trust.

Mora appeals.

ANALYSIS

Mora pitches his appeal not on the terms of either the Pension Trust or the Vacation Trust, but on regulations issued by the Department of Labor interpreting ERISA, 29 U.S.C. § 1052 . They read:

Mora argues that the payments made to the Vacation Trust are payments “due to vacation.” As the Pension Trust is undis-putedly an ERISA plan, Mora concludes that the regulation controls.

The difficulty for Mora is that the payments to the Vacation Trust were not made “on account of time during which no duties [were] performed.” The payments were made precisely for time during which Mora worked. These hours have already been counted once. To count them again would be to count them twice. The regulations do not call for that improbable result. Indeed, they explicitly prohibit it. 29 C.F.R. § 2530 .200b-2(b)(3); accord. Hope v. Int'l Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 785 F.2d 826, 830-31 (9th Cir.1986).

This conclusion is consistent with the express provision of Article XII of the Vacation Trust, already quoted: “Contributions to the [Vacation Trust] ... shall be deemed to be, and shall be, a part of the wages due to the employees with respect to whose work such payments are made.” They “shall not be a part of the hourly wage rates for the purpose of computing overtime, or reporting time.... ” The conclusion is equally consistent with the August 22, 1966 ruling of the Internal Revenue Service and the July 12, 1967 ruling of the Franchise Tax Board of the state of California. I.R.S. Priv. Ltr. Rul. 67-351 (Aug. 22, 1966); CA F.T.B. Priv. Ltr. Rul. (July 12, 1967). The trustees and the tax authorities have not been in the dark for over thirty-eight years.

Mora’s contentions have a superficial attraction because of the name of the entity into which the 1970 and 1972 contributions were made. His argument ends with the name. The payments were in fact into a trust that held savings on his account. His suit is an attempt to make an end run around the union-employer trustees of the Pension Trust. It is without a basis.

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.